Whatever It Is That You Think You Remember

Think You Remember

Memory is fallible. You tend to treat it like it’s not, but you’re wrong. It’s pliable, suggestable, sometimes even amorphous. What really happens and what you remember happening – those are often completely separate things.

Here’s an example:

You wake up covered in blood and assume you got into a fight the night before, but your mind is blank, and when you turn the phone camera to see your face, there’s no sign of bruising. Even your knuckles are pain-free. But there’s blood flowing from your neck. Weird.

You close your eyes, try to think. Where were you last night? You swallow, and your saliva tastes like old blood and stale beer. Gross! But then you recall…

You were at a bar. You met a woman. She had blonde hair. She looked vaguely familiar, but you couldn’t place her, until…

“Paul? Oh my god, how are you?” Her enthusiastic greeting was met by your blank stare.

“Do I… know you?”

“I’m Sam’s sister,” she said. “Don’t you remember? I used to try to tag along whenever you and Sam went to the movies.”

Sam was a friend from childhood. Every Saturday, they’d ride their bikes to the dollar theatre to see second-run movies and gorge themselves on junk food. But he didn’t remember a sister, until…

“I had a pink bike with streamers.” The woman – Sam’s sister – was still talking. “With this really tinny bell and you guys hated it. You told me I could come to the movies if I kept up, but…”

“… but you never did.” The memory was there as if it had been implanted. “We’d kill ourselves trying to outrace you, and you almost caught up once.” You paused. “Your hair was darker then, wasn’t it.”

“So, you do remember me!”

“Sure,” you say. And you realize that an age gap of three years when she was nine and you were twelve was an unbridgeable chasm, but now that you’re thirty-one, a three-year difference is nothing. “Can I buy you a drink?” you offer.

“Do you buy drinks for a lot of women?”

“Hardly ever,” you say. “But you’re Sam’s sister.”

You spent the night drinking and telling stories about Sam. “I haven’t seen him in years,” you said, trying to recall the last time you even called him. “He moved around a lot. He’s somewhere back east, isn’t he? New York? Or…?”

“Pennsylvania,” she answered. And you nod. Because you’re suddenly quite certain there’s a postcard of Liberty Hall on your fridge with Sam’s newest address.

The evening flew by. The drinks flew faster. You aren’t typically the kind who drinks to get drunk, but somehow you’d stopped keeping track. You were surprised when the bartender announced the last call.

“I should go,” you told her, “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”

“I’m good,” she said. But when you stumble at the curb, she pulled the keys from your hand. “I guess I’m giving you a lift. Where do you live?”

You don’t recall the drive. You can’t remember how she got you up the stairs to your apartment. But you remember her voice in your ear. “Invite me in,” she’d said, a faint rasp coloring her tone. Had that been there before?

The hazy image of undressing comes back to you. Your skin was hot and hers was cool. You kept reaching for the light switches, and she kept preventing it. “Darkness is better,” she said.

You remember her pushing you backwards onto your bed, and you feel the echo of her weight on top of you. You reached for her face, to pull her closer for a kiss, but she dodged and got your neck.

(Your neck where the blood is coming from.)

“She bit me,” you remember with a start. “Holy fuck, she was a vampire.” You say the words out loud even though your apartment is empty. “Wait, that’s not even possible.”

You have a sudden urge to call your friend Sam and ask him if he knew his sister was a vampire.

Except… you’re pretty certain Sam never had a sister, that the girl with the pink bike was some other kid on your street, that there was no postcard from Pennsylvania stuck to your fridge with a Domino’s Pizza magnet.

Your phone chirps. An incoming text from an unknown number. A single word. “Forget.”

You move to the bathroom and start the shower. By the time your hot piss hits the cold water of the toilet, you only remember that you met a woman in a bar and had some drinks.

By the time you emerge from the shower, all traces of blood down the drain, you’ll be absolutely sure that you cut your neck shaving.

 

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, or whatever it is that you think you remember?” –  Elizabeth Loftus

 

 

Photo credit: PkProect

Operation

Operation

She always arranged her tools before she began any operation. Just as in an any operating theater, it was important to be able to lay your hand on the correct instrument without looking, without thinking. Her young assistant was inexperienced and didn’t always make the right choice, so it was best to be able to direct her to the proper implement.

The operating table had been draped in protective material designed to collect any leaking fluids or stray bits of flesh, and the lighting had been adjusted to illuminate the field with no confusing shadows.

Her hands were already clean, so she drew one glove and then another over her fingers, and down around her wrists. The girl across the table had already done the same, and, she noted approvingly, her long hair had been tucked into a cotton cap. Good.

The patient was already in place, with glistening skin ready to be pierced by a blade. They had marked the surgical site to ensure no mistakes would be made.

“Wait,” she said. “Something’s missing.”

“I forgot to start the music!” Her assistant had the decency to look embarrassed. The girl gave an order to Alexa and the first notes of Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre” wafted from the speaker system, the opening monotone chime seeming very like a countdown clock.

“No, there’s something else.” She surveyed the scene, and then smiled as realization dawned. She left the area for a moment and returned with metal container. “The collection bowl was missed,” she explained, placing the thing in position. One more confirming look, and then, “Alright, now we’re ready.”

“I hope this goes well,” her assistant said. “Last time we messed up the mouth, and it really wasn’t pretty.”

“We’ll be fine,” she said. “Hand me the first blade.” The girl’s small hand placed the serrated knife into her larger one. “Making the first incision now.”

The blade pierced the patient’s skin and fluid oozed out. Her assistant wiped it away with a paper towel and the two shared a look of glee.

“Shall we continue?” she asked, and when the girl nodded her approval, she made the second cut, announcing, “Alright, Jack! Time for your lobotomy!”

Mother and daughter giggled together. Pumpkin carving had never been more fun.

Tlanchana

la_tlanchana_by_andro_san12_df23o87-414w-2xThe Mother of Water has many moods and many forms.

When she is sad or angry, her tears fill the basin of the lake near our home, and the power of her emotion fuels wicked storms. The fishermen and sailors beg her for mercy, but she is the snake mother then, and she whips her tail in agitation. The men know to remain ashore and use the time to sit near the fire repairing their nets or stitching new sails.

They tell stories of my mother’s worst tantrums, but their voices are full of respect in equal measures as the fear.

“I remember,” the oldest man says, “that when conquerors tried to cross the lake and take our village, the Water-Mother used her snake tail to whip their weapons from their hands and push their ships back with her well-placed waves.”

When my mother is feeling happy, the skies reflect the bright blue of her eyes, and the waters in the lake are calm. She takes a fish-tail then, swimming alongside the fishing boats and guiding them toward the best catch.

She likes to play with the children on these days, and while I was not the first or the last to wrap my young arms around her neck and let her carry me over and under the surface, coming up for air always at the exact right moment, I am the one who is never afraid.

“The Water-Mother is our protector,” the other mothers tell their children. “And it is an honor to be invited to swim with her.”

Sometimes, though, the Mother of Water must take human form, trading tail for legs, and walking on the land. She did this once to find a mate, and that’s how I was made, but she also comes to shore whenever one of the elders passes out of this life.

In those times her tears are salty, and she cries them over the graves of those who have left. She wraps her silky hair around herself like a cloak and keeps vigil over the bones of the dead.

The old grannies cook for her at those times and leave pots of food and jugs of water to sustain her while she sits in silence. She might sit for two nights or five, or even seven, but when she leaves, it always seems she takes our collective grief away with her.

“Death is part of life,” she reminds us, as she returns to the lake.

Unlike the other girls in our village, the Mother of Water is also my mother of blood. When I am older, she tells me in her voice that ripples like a stream, I will learn to shift my form, to take on the snake tail when I must be fierce and the fish tail when I am being playful, and legs when I am ready for love.

Sometimes she visits in her human form, just to spend time with us.

“Did you love my father?” I ask her.

“I did,” she says. “I do,” she adds.

And she walks on legs into the candlelit depths of our house and shares her joy with the man who raises me. When she departs after those times, her eyes are dry, but my father’s face is wet with tears, and so is mine.

The Mother of Water has many moods and many forms, but in every one, she protects those of us she calls her own.

Art credit: Andro-san12

The Warehouse of Lost Dreams

1730 - Dreams

 

“So, it’s your first night at the warehouse, huh, kid?” The paunchy older man with the graying whiskers and faded denim overalls asked. His tone was conversational. His smile was sincere. “Lemme guess… you’re putting yourself through college?”

“I am,” I said. My own coveralls were new, the indigo still deep and dark, with creases from where they’d been folded in the package. With self-deprecating humor, I said, “I’m on the six-year plan.”

“Better six years than no years,” my mentor said. “I’m Maury; lemme show you around.”

“Sure,” I said.

“As a custodian you need to know the sorting policy. Here, on the first aisle are the Childhood Fantasies… things kids grow out of before they turn ten.”

“Like being an astronaut?”

“More like being a spaceship captain, although we still get a lot of firefighters, lion tamers, and superheroes.” Maury shakes his head. “Some of those are messy – the kids who tried flying before they gave up on the idea… their bodies usually didn’t suffer much, but those dreams literally went splat! That’s why we cover up.”

“I was wondering,” I said. “What’s next?”

“Well, this next section, it’s the dreams that are set aside when we’re coming of age.” He reaches into a bin and retrieves a handful of pointe shoes, dangling from faded pink ribbons. “Lots of ballerinas in this section, and tap dancers, but also baseball and soccer players. These are the sports and arts that kids give up when they head off to college.”

“Because their tastes change?” I ask.

“Some of them.” Maury returns the ballet shoes to the bin, picks up a soccer ball and bins it, and then moves a unicycle into a bike rack. “Others… they just didn’t have time, or they couldn’t afford to keep up after high school.” He stops, turns to face me, and stares for a long moment. “Your clarinet is three over, fourth shelf,” he says.

“How did you know about that?”

Maury favors me with a sympathetic smile. “You work here long enough, and you start to pick up on things.”

“How long have you been working here?” I ask.

“A long time,” he answers vaguely.

I follow him up and down a few more aisles until we reach a bin of hard hats. “Put this on,” he says, handing me a yellow one. He places an orange one over his buzz-cut hair. “This section can be dangerous.”

We enter a warehouse aisle that has bits of things – dolls, china, musical instruments, paint brushes, running shoes… riding saddles and medical texts.

“Broken dreams?” I guess aloud.

“Yup,” Maury answers. “Next aisle isn’t dangerous, but it might make you a little sad…”

“Oh?”

But he doesn’t need to explain. One side of the aisle is bins full of college sweatshirts and corporate IDs. I gulp, knowing that if I’m not careful my own future could end up folded and graying here. The other side of the aisle, though, is different. Smaller bins. Engagement rings. Wedding bands. Baby shoes.

“Oh,” I manage to say, since Maury seems to expect a reaction of some kind. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” he answers, as if we’ve just had a profound conversation. And maybe we have. It just didn’t involve a ton of words. “C’mon.”

More rows, some are things I recognize, some are poorly lit, and the shapes are abstract and indistinct. But there’s a warm light emanating from the very furthest aisle, and here’s where we find rows of easels, fishing poles, knitting supplies, baking equipment.

“This stuff doesn’t seem like it’s lost or broken,” I say.

“No. This… this is where I come when the rest of it gets too much. This is the place where later-in-life dreams are protected until they’re ready to be used. Most of these dreamers are grandparents, and they’re either planning retirement activities or embracing hobbies to share with their grandchildren.

“Oh… wow.”

“It’s not good to linger too long,” Maury says quietly. “Maybe I’ve come here too many times.” He picks up one of the fishing poles. “Work hard, while you’re here, kid,” he says. I notice that his hard hat is now a canvas one with fishing lures attached to it. Like that guy from the TV show M*A*S*H.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“Don’t let go of your dream,” he continues. “Six years, even seven, you finish college.”

“I won’t,” I say. “I mean, I will. I’ll finish.”

Maury turns away from me and walks down toward the brightest part of the light. I take two steps to follow him, but then there’s a loud alarm from somewhere above me, and a computer voice announces “Incoming shipment. Custodian, please report to the loading dock.”

I turn toward the place where I came in, which is suddenly only a few feet from me, instead of rows and rows away. It’s my first night at the Warehouse of Lost Dreams, but it won’t be my last.

Art credit: Max Steksov

 

 

Itchy

It was her face that had attracted him, her profile picture on the dating app. But it was her fingers that really caught his attention. They were long, perfect for the piano her bio said she played, and tipped with pink-painted nails that were slightly sharp. Those nails and the expression in her green eyes promised a host of wicked delights.

He swiped right, sent a note, started the kind of textual flirting that passes for courtship in the twenty-first century. They met for drinks. He ordered a beer, and she had a pink cocktail that lingered on her lips when they kissed. She tickled his palm with her nails and the shivery feeling left him wanting – no, needing – more.

Itchy by adiruch

He was charming. She was willing. He left her bed at three the next morning with the feeling of her nails on his skin and an empty promise dripping from his tongue. “I’ll call you.”

Three days later he hasn’t called. It’s not that he didn’t have fun, but that he knows he could do better.

On the fourth day, she texts him, but he doesn’t answer.

She texts him a few more times, but he doesn’t respond. She’s too clingy, he decides, even if her nails were exquisite.

Two weeks after their date, he’s in the same bar with another woman, one who sips bourbon, and he sees her across the room. She’s with a group of friends, but their eyes lock. She mouths a single word that he can’t understand. Bitchy, maybe? Whatever. The bourbon-sipping blonde squeezes his thigh with her hand.

“Let’s get out of here,” she says.

He’s too glad to agree.

But he can feel the other woman’s eyes follow him out, and the memory of her fingernails raking his naked back is suddenly fresh in his mind. “Ohhh.”

“Hmm?” asks his date.

“Nothing.”

His right shoulder blade is itchy, and he reaches backwards to scratch it, but the spot moves just out of his reach.

By the time they reach his apartment, he’s squirming in his clothes.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“I’m fine. I’m just… itchy.”

“Want me to scratch your back?”

“God, yes.”

With him shirtless in his living room, she tries to alleviate his itch, but it seems that with every stroke of her short nails the feeling only gets worse. “Is there something there?” he asks. “On my back? A bite? A rash?”

“No, nothing.”

The itching is increasing. He can’t stop scratching long enough to kiss her again let alone get it up so they can do more. She leaves without promising to call.

He didn’t expect her to.

He tries rubbing his back against the rough stucco of the wall outside his bedroom, where the hallway forms a corner, then tries the door frame itself. But his skin demands more.

He tries a cold shower, uses his back scrubber with as much pressure as he can muster. But the water seems to spread the itch.

He swallows a couple of Benadryl and tries to sleep, but his skin is on fire, and he ends up wired and wooly, using object after object – a wire hanger, an old toothbrush, a vegetable brush, the closed blades of his kitchen shears – in vain attempts to alleviate the itching.

Morning finds him naked and shaking, trying to reach the spot between his rib and shoulder with the blade of a carving knife, passing the edge sideways across his burning skin while he waits on hold for the advice nurse his insurance provides.

“Try a moisturizing lotion,” she suggests, “or an ice massage.”

Neither suggestion considers the fact that he can’t reach the infernal itch.

He calls out sick, fills his tub with ice, lies in it until his skin is blue and thinks relief has finally come. But when he’s warm again the itching returns.

He flips channels on the television to distract himself, landing on an ad for power tools. A belt sander would be perfect, he thinks, except there’s no way to make it reach the spot.

He takes more Benadryl and chases it with a healthy swig of vodka.

* * * * *

He spends three days in a near-coma induced by alcohol and antihistamines. He’s given up on the carving knife and tried a hand saw. He’s sure the teeth are drawing blood because he can feel fluid oozing down his back, and it’s definitely not sweat.

He wonders if he could use an x-acto knife to excise the spot. He calls his buddy from work to ask for help. The friend arrives with gauze, alcohol, a couple of knives, and – oddly – a role of sage and a Bic lighter.

“What’s that for?” he asks.

“In case a demon caused the itching. We can smoke it out.”

“Will that work?”

“No idea. It can’t hurt.”

But the smoke just sets off the fire alarm.

“Just cut it…” he begs. “Please. Just slice it away.”

“Here?” his buddy asks pressing under his shoulder blade.

“Lower.”

“Here?”

“More to the left. No – higher – no, down and to the right. No – FUCK!”

“Maybe,” his buddy said, “You should tell me exactly how this happened.”

And so, he explains about how he saw the girl he’d ghosted when he was out on a date with someone else, and she’d mouthed “bitchy” at him.

“Bitchy?”

“Well, I thought it was at the time. Now I’m thinking she said itchy.”

“She cursed you.”

“You think?”  His friend is silent. “Sorry,” he says.

“We’re cool,” his buddy answers. “I think…. I think maybe it’s not me you need to be apologizing to, anyway. I think you have to apologize to the woman who did this.”

“Seriously.”

“That or scratch yourself to death. Your back already looks a lot like hamburger.”

“Damn.”

“Sorry I couldn’t help.”

* * * * *

It’s another two days of torment before he can make himself contact her. He hasn’t slept but he’s figured out how to attach sandpaper to a broom handle to scratch more. It comes back bloodier every time, but he doesn’t care. Anything to stop the itching for a few seconds.

He’s taking enough antihistamine and alcohol that while he doesn’t sleep, he does enter a sort of altered state where he can see her face and feel her fingernails on other parts of his body. It’s when the itching moves to his balls that he caves and texts her.

“I think maybe I owe you an apology,” texts.

Her response comes, several hours later, in the form of a question. “You think or you know? You promised to call,” she adds. “Keep your promise.”

He almost throws his phone across the room, but the itching is getting worse again. Scratching his crotch with one hand, he keys in her number with the other.

“This is Cat.” Was her voice always that smooth?

“Hello, Cat. This is Dave, from… from the other night. I’m sorry I didn’t call. It was really rude of me.”

“Yes, it was. I wasn’t expecting a lifetime commitment, but a call telling me you didn’t think we were a match would have been the adult thing to do.”

“I guess it was just easier to blow you off and move on.”

“Easier for you, you mean.” Her tone was calm when she had every right to be mean or petty. “Not so easy to be the one waiting for a call that never comes.”

“I never thought of it that way,” he admitted.

“No, you just rely on your charm and lack of conscience. That’s what the itching is by the way. It’s your conscience trying to get your attention. It doesn’t usually take this long though.”

“I guess I’m particularly obtuse.”

“I guess you are.”

“Can you… make it stop… please.”

She laughs into his ear. “Haven’t you realized? It already has.”

He goes quiet, forcing himself to feel… and she’s right… there’s no more itching. There can’t be. Because he’s scratched away every last nerve on his body.

His phone falls to the floor, and his body follows soon after.

 

Photo credit: adiruch

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heat Lightning

The sky is tight like a drum and painted in shades of gray fading from a purplish charcoal to a soft dove with bits of white. To the west, where the sun is setting, pink and orange glow through the gray, the dying embers of a summer day. There isn’t any wind, and there isn’t any chance of rain, even though the air is thick with moisture.

Heat Lightning

It’s the kind of weather that provokes lassitude.

Sitting on the porch swing, sipping lemonade, the woman and the girl watch the sky.

There’s flickering light out to the east, swaths of clouded sky lighting up and fading out like semaphore lamps, but the code they’re using isn’t Morse. It isn’t human language at all.

“Mama, are the fairies talking about us?”

The woman reaches out to her daughter and smooths a flyaway piece of hair out of the child’s face. The flickers of light seem more urgent when she’s watching them. “They want me to come back,” she says softly. “They want me to come home.”

“But you’re not going, are you?”

“No, sweet. I’m not going. Home is here with you.” But the woman can’t help it; she turns her gaze back to the sky. The light flickering there is mirrored in her eyes, as if she’s talking back to the unseen fairies. A whisp of a breeze stirs the air, whispering through the long, loose hair of the woman, and the tight braids of the little girl.

The lights fade away, and the dark creeps in and settles around them.

When the last of the sun has drained away and the stars are visible there is a low rumble. A battered red Ford pickup truck trundles to a stop on the gravel driveway. A man hops out, sees the pair on the porch and lets his lips spread into a happy grin.

He bounds up the three stairs to the porch with more energy than anyone has a right to have in the heat of summer. “Sorry I’m late,” he says. “How are my fairy princesses today?”

“Mama’s the only fairy princess,” the little girl answers. But she leaves the swing and lets the man scoop her up into his arms. “Did you have a good day, Daddy?”

“I did.” He kisses her on the nose then joins the woman on the swing, settling the girl on his lap. “And you?” he asks. “How was your day?”

The little girl understands that the question is really meant for her mother.

The woman leans toward the man, and kisses his cheek, tan from working outside, and rough with end-of-the-day beard stubble. “It was fine;” she says, but it’s not the usage of fine that women use when they really aren’t. She means it. “We’ve been watching the sky.”

Another round of flashing light illuminates the darkness in the distance. The woman seems to read the signals, to comprehend the conversation. She nods and smiles. “It won’t rain tonight,” she says. Softly. “But probably tomorrow.”

The man follows the woman’s gaze toward the eastern sky. “Heat lightning,” he says. “No rain with that. Not for us, anyway.”

“No,” the woman agrees. “It’s just the fairies talking.”

“And what’s the word from them?”

She smiles again, and this time when her eyes light up, they’re not flickering, but glowing steadily, like twin lanterns on a windowsill. “They say I can stay.”

She doesn’t add the words “for now,” but all three of them, their entire tiny family, are thinking it.

Photo by dendoktoor.

Bead by Bead

0746 - Bead by Bead

For years, decades even, Mama Louise had been known for her beadwork. Every velvet bag, every fancy dress, every bridal gown in their small town had been hand-beaded by the old woman.

Her work was impeccable, of course. She still used silk and cotton thread when commercial beadwork had switched to synthetics, or even glue. She never seemed to measure, but the spacing between her beads, whether it was simple trim or an intricate pattern, was always precise. Not a millimeter offset. Not a fraction of a millimeter in error. And when she was asked how she created these items of wearable art, Louise would smile and answer, “Bead by bead.”

More than her actual work, however, was what Louise instilled in her work. Before making a bag, Mama Louise would ask where it would be used, and she would have the eventual owner talk about their hopes and dreams for the event. The purse would then seem to carry the faintest scent of the floral archways of a specific restaurant, or glitter with the starlight of an open-air theatre.

If she were beading a dress for a ball or party, Mama Louise would listen to the sort of music likely to be played and her old feet would tap out the rhythms as she worked. (Somehow, her arthritic knees and ankles never objected to such movement.) Later, the women who commissioned her work would share that their feet never seemed as light, their energy never seemed so strong. “I could have danced forever,” one woman shared, glowing with happiness and enthusiasm.

Bridal gowns had always been Mama Louise’s specialty. She limited her commissions to two a year and quoted a five-month turnaround. It was much longer than it took to have a custom gown from one of the bridal shops on Main Street, but her customers never objected. They knew that a dress from a store was just a dress, while a creation sewn by Louise would be a family heirloom.

For those gowns, Louise would ask for stories of the bride’s childhood. She would collect memories from her parents and friends, her cousins and sisters and partners in youthful crimes and misdemeanors (which is how she jestingly referred to youthful exploits). She would also ask that each woman provide a well-wish for the bride-to-be.

When the recipient of such a gown finally tried it on, it would be as if each memory was whispering to her, and when she walked down the aisle on her special day, to meet her partner at the end, she would feel the love of all the well-wishes wrapping itself around her, and sending her into a happy future.

With so many girls and women being connected to Mama Louise through her work, it was inevitable that someone would notice when the old woman began work on another piece. This dress wasn’t pure white, like a bridal gown, but buttery, like French vanilla.

“Who is this piece for?” her visitors would ask – for it wasn’t unusual for her clients to stop by with baked goods and have coffee or tea with Louise. “Is this a wedding dress?”

But Louise didn’t share the recipient’s name. Instead she would lead her guest down memory lane, collecting a story of when that person wore a Creation by Louise.

Bead by bead, this last dress was nearly finished, but work on it stopped suddenly, when Louise had a heart attack one night.

Her son was the one who found her. He was a quiet man. A concert violinist with elegant fingers. He could have done beadwork as fine as his mother’s but that wasn’t where his heart led him. An only child of an only child, he’d considered his mother’s clients to be the sisters, cousins, and aunties he’d never had.

“My mother,” he said, “never sewed for herself. But this dress… ” he choked up as he told the people who had gathered in the old woman’s apartment. “This dress was meant to be her burial gown. She knew, I think, that her time was running out.”

There were three days until the wake and the funeral. Three days to find a shop to finish the beadwork… except.

Except Vanessa, the owner of Mama Louise’s last wedding gown, came to sew on a few beads from her dress. And Caitlyn who had no fewer than six of Louise’s velvet handbags, brought three beads from each.

The contributions continued. Each of these former clients added pieces of their favorite dresses and purses to the last few rows of beads, laughing together at their uneven rows, sharing memories and stories as they worked.

They finished at midnight, the night before the wake, sitting back and sharing a collective sigh.

Somehow, the soft breeze that wafted through Louise’s living room didn’t surprise them. It just felt right. Similarly, the appearance of their friend and neighbor in her rocking chair, looking peaceful, if slightly transparent, was not scary, but somehow soothing.

“We finished your dress,” the women said. “We couldn’t come close to your talent… but we tried to do the work with love.”

“And so, you did,” the ghost of their  beloved friend shared in a thin voice. “Bead by bead, you finished the gown. Bead by bead you strengthened your connections to each other and your community. Bead by bead, you spread love into the world.”

They wanted to hug her, but you can’t hug a ghost.

They wanted to share all their stories, but she was already fading.

Still, she held up an ethereal hand. “I know all your stories,” she said. “I know your hopes and dreams, and they will warm me in the next life. You’ve shared them with me… all of you… bead by bead.”

 

Clock Watcher

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

They call her the Unturnable, because she will not change her mind. Once someone has reached the end of their allotted thread, she whisks in to snip it.

They call her the Inevitable One. The Inflexible.

Rarely do they use her name: Atropos.

Most times, the cut is a gentle one, and she catches her charge as their weight is untethered from the cable holding them to life. Sometimes, she misses the catch, and there is a metaphysical thud as though a weary soul has collapsed to a less-than-ethereal floor.

People fear her, but her calling is a necessary one.

Time and technology have changed how she works, over the years, decades, centuries, and epochs. Her sisters have changed their methods as well.

Clotho was so excited to be able to use a 3-D printer to create lives, rather than merely spinning them. And Lachesis was immediately taken with any number of Rube Goldberg-esque measuring devices involving chutes and troughs and scoops and bins and rolling parts that bounce and glide  – the middle sister always had been a bit of a tinkerer.

And as for Atropos, herself? Somewhat ironically, the Unturnable had become enamored with the turning hands of clocks. A clock for each of her charges, each of her targets, every living soul, with the correct allotment (as proscribed by Lachesis and created by Clotho) pre-programmed into the perfect number of ticks and tocks or bleeps or blinks (some of the clocks were digital).

They didn’t chime hours, these clocks, but showed how a thread would be snipped. The Shears were merely a symbol now – there were so many other Ways in the world.  Look at that one, it’s got lots of time left before the hours wind down to Doesn’t Wake Up, or that one over there, just a few minutes left before it chimes Old Age.

But then there are the more ominous clocks, the ones with darker Ways. Those are the lives that are tortured and broken. Some are sad, some are angry, some have been harmed, some wish to cause harm. Some wish to take other lives with them when they go, some wish only for their own endings.

And Atropos is the Clock Watcher who sees them all.

Tick, tock, it’s half an hour ’til Poison.

Tick, tock, it’s a quarter to Gun.

They call her the Unturnable, but some clocks, she wishes she could turn back.

Wind and Water

0711 - The Wave

He’d been reluctant to bring her to the farm. The prairie was so far from the ocean she loved and confining her to a landlocked life seemed somehow cruel.

The night before they left California, she took him to Half Moon Bay. She stripped off her clothes and while he watched, she stepped into the freezing Pacific.

He was half-convinced she’d be eaten by a shark – a surfer had been attacked just a few days before.

He was worried the undertow would claim her, and their marriage would be over before it had really begun.

But after fifteen minutes she’d come walking back out of the frothy, foamy waves, her skin glowing in the light of the full moon. He’d tried to wrap her in the thick towel they’d brought, but she’d demurred.

“Hold this, please?” she requested, drawing a blue glass bottle from her beach bag.

He did, and she squeezed the saltwater from her dark hair into the waiting vessel.

Then she’d wrapped the towel around them both and pushed him onto the scratchy, wool blanket she’d inherited from her grandfather. “He was a sea captain,” she’d told him once. “He spoke the language of the wind and the waves.”

But in that moment, the only wind was a balmy one blowing across the beach, and the only waves he cared about weren’t the ones crashing a few yards away, but the ones he was riding as she rode him.

* * *

She’d adapted to prairie life more easily than he’d expected. She had a green thumb and her tomatoes won raves at the county fair. So did her strawberry-rhubarb pies. “I never knew,” she told him, “what they meant when they talked about ‘pie plant’ in the Little House books until I came here. To think it was only ever rhubarb!”

At night they’d light citronella candles and sit on the porch and watch the stars wheel around in the sky. Well, she’d watch the stars. He’d watch the wind as it ruffled her hair and her skirts.

The wind was a constant presence on the prairie. He’d warned her about it, told her that in the old days, before electrical hum and technology drowned the sound and provided distractions, people literally went mad from the never-ceasing wind.

But she’d just laughed and teased the nape of his neck. “I like the wind,” she said. “If I close my eyes, it sounds like the ocean.”

* * *

For the most part, their life was happy, but sometimes, he caught her staring at her blue bottle of ocean water, and he knew that a part of her was still in California. He might be her husband, but the ocean was her lover, and always would be.

He asked if she wanted to move back, and she refused.

“This is our home,” she said. “I like it here.”

So, they got a dog, and they added a room for her to write in and a room for him to build model trains in and a room they might, one day, give over to a child.

The day the digital stick blinked PREGNANT, he came home to strawberry-rhubarb pie and homemade black bean chili and cornbread with fresh honey butter, and they went to the soft grass  in the back yard and made love under the stars with the warm wind washing over them, and the stars smiling down.

The day she started cramping and bleeding, the day they knew that room would never be a child’s room, the wind had never been so fierce. He begged and pleaded with her to let him take her to the emergency room, but she’d seen the tiny fetal mass go down the toilet… a lima bean and a splash of blood and said there was nothing emergent about it.

She clutched her blue bottle and wept, and he wrapped himself around her, and wept as well.

* * *

He heard the shatter of glass and went to check on her, expecting that she’d dropped a glass in the middle of the night (she never would turn the lights on when she went to get water). But it wasn’t a glass.

She was standing on the front porch with the door wide open, and the fragments of her blue bottle at her feet.

He heard a rushing sound, but  it wasn’t the wind he was accustomed to.

Rather, it was a wall of water – a giant wave – rushing toward them.

“I would have taken you back to the sea,” he told her.”

“I know,” she said. “But it’s too late. The sea is coming to take me back to it.”

 

Trouble Bass

0705 - Trouble BassFor years, the house had been rumored to be haunted. It was the one that always seemed neglected. It wasn’t tall or imposing – just a post-war bungalow, like half the houses in the neighborhood, but there was something off about it. The grass was always a touch too long, the shingles too shabby, the windows… when you walked by at dusk or after, it was as if there was something watching from behind them.

Kids dared each other to climb the porch steps and knock on the door on Halloween. The light was always on, its bare bulb illuminating the peeling paint of the screen door and the rusty hinge that kept it mostly shut.

But no one ever took the challenge.

Still, if a soul was brave enough to slow their steps of an evening, they’d have heard sounds from within the old house that might have changed their minds. For after dark, there were warm lights behind those watching windows, and if the wind was just right, a person who paid attention could catch the sound of old jazz – acoustic jazz – seeping out from the cracks in the floorboards and the gaps in the siding.

The bassline was always most prominent.

When Sherry and her family moved into the house next door, that bass was the first thing she heard. Her bedroom window overlooked the neighboring back yard, and she could see a covered patio lined with colored Christmas lights, and smell the sweet aroma of pipe tobacco.

Often, she could hear men talking and laughing. She could tell by their voices, their accents, the way they spoke, that they were black, that they were older, that they were from the South, and that they were musicians, but she could never discern specific words. When the laughter stopped, the music would begin.

So many nights, Sherry would lose herself in that music, letting it distract her from the sounds of her parents fighting downstairs, or, later, from the sound of her mother crying in frustration and desperation, after her father had stormed out yet again, or come home drunk and violent, or finally left forever.

Sometimes, Sherry was half convinced her unseen neighbor and his friends played extra-loud on the really bad nights, just for her.

The music went on all through her middle- and high school years. She always meant to go and knock on the door, bring a batch of cookies (everyone liked cookies, right? And she was a decent baker) and thank him (she was certain it was a him) for the music.

But she never did.

One late-autumn weekend, home from college for the traditional doing of the masses of laundry on Mom’s dime, Sherry sensed a change in the old house.

Sure, it had always been a little bit raggedy, but now, the windows felt empty, the grass was too tall, and that night, there was no talking, no laughter… no music.

The next morning, she layered herself in turtlenecks and flannel and climbed the three cement steps to the front porch and knocked.

She wasn’t expecting a response.

She was half-certain her neighbor had died, and since she’d never bothered to meet him, no one would have thought to tell her. Or her mother.

But a rustling sound came from within, and a man with white hair and dark, weathered skin, opened the door.

“I’m your neighbor,” Sherry said. “I’m Sherry.”

“‘Bout time you came,” the old man said. “Played for you for so long… never a peep. I knew you’d come if I stopped. We’ve been expecting you.”

“I’m sorry?” Sherry said.

“Nothin’ to be sorry about. Just follow me.” And he turned and shuffled back into the house.

Inside, it was just as shabby as outside, but it was also somehow warm and cozy. “That’s Pete,” the old man said. “This here’s Milt, Ron, Joe, and Mona.” He introduced her to a circle of older people, all aged, all with skin and hair like his, all holding instruments. “My hands can’t pluck the strings anymore,” he said. “But yours… yours are young. You can learn.”

“But I’m an economics major,” Sherry protested.

“Economics is what you do. Music is what you are. Today you’re a trouble bass player.”

Trouble bass?”

“Yup. Iff’n you play for nice folks in clubs, it’s double bass, but when you play for the people who need to hear it, need it to keep their hearts whole, it’s trouble bass.”

“So, you were playing for me, all these years?”

“As if you didn’t know.”

“I should have come sooner.”

“Nope. You came when you were ready. Like I said, it’s about time. Now, come here.” And he put his instrument, honey-brown and warm from care and love, in front of Sherry, and helped her place her hands. “Good thing you’re a tall girl.”

For Sherry, learning to play the bass was a sort of homecoming. All the music she’d listened to growing up finally had a place to go, and her fingers – fingers that usually clicked pens or absently tapped on paper – finally had a healthy means of expression.

The old man never shared his name. Only his music. Sherry just called him Mr. Bass Man, or, when she was particularly exasperated with him, Trouble.

Eventually, she took her place – his place – in the circle of players, laughing with them and talking. They shared their histories and she shared hers and it was as if cultures were being bridged in between riffs and licks and improvised melodies.

Trouble breathed his last breath a few days after Sherry graduated.

She was surprised to learn that he had a son – a doctor. He came to close up the house, get it ready to sell. In a romance novel, the two of them would have found a connection, fallen in love, and made music together to honor the old man.

But it wasn’t a romance.

She inherited Trouble’s bass.

His friends dispersed after the funeral.

And Sherry?

Sherry formed a pickup jazz ensemble among the accountants and other eggheads she worked with in the big city. Her condo had a covered patio, and she lined it with fairy lights and invited them to come and eat and drink and laugh and play.

They called themselves Numbers Game.

Cut a few albums.

Played gigs in schools.

Sherry got letters from kids who said their music made them feel safe. That they listened to her walking bass lines when they walked home at night and felt like someone was walking with them. That the music helped put their troubles in a safe place.

She knew that at some point some kid would find her, and she’d have to teach them what she knew.

But until then, Sherry plucked her fingers on the strings of the trouble bass, and found peace.

For years, the house had been rumored to be haunted. It was the one that always seemed neglected. It wasn’t tall or imposing – just a post-war bungalow, like half the houses in the neighborhood, but there was something off about it. The grass was always a touch too long, the shingles too shabby, the windows… when you walked by at dusk or after, it was as if there was something watching from behind them.

But if a person paid attention. If a person really listened… they could hear it, coming from the back yard, or maybe from the kitchen on rainy nights… the sound of a walking bass line, thumping its solidity through the darkened streets, guiding them safely home.